Security is a false God. Begin to make sacrifices to it and you are lost.

- Paul Bowles

Everyone is isolated from everyone else. The concept of society is like a cushion to protect us from the knowledge of that isolation. A fiction that …

- Paul Bowles

Fiction should always steer clear of political considerations.

- Paul Bowles

I've always wanted to get as far as possible from the place where I was born. Far both geographically and spiritually. To leave it behind ... I feel …

- Paul Bowles

The only thing that makes life worth living is the possibility of experiencing now and then a perfect moment. And perhaps even more than that, it's h…

- Paul Bowles

How fragile we are under the sheltering sky. Behind the sheltering sky is a vast dark universe, and we're just so small.

- Paul Bowles

The only effort worth making is the one it takes to learn the geography of one's own nature.

- Paul Bowles

Life is lived only once. And the less seriously the better.

- Paul Bowles

Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler belonging no more to one place than to the next, mo…

- Paul Bowles